R E C E N T L Y
Prozac is for wimps
The nanny trial, "Boogie Nights" and feminist writing about men
Martha Stewart, I salute you
Men and their discontents
Why we leer at JonBenet
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A L S O
About Camille Paglia
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C O L U M N I S T S
This land is our land
Sexpert Opinion
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The Awful Truth
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Ask Camille
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A S K_C A M I L L E +|+ CAMILLE+PAGLIA +| PAGE 2 OF 2
Dear Camille:
Actress Hunter Tylo signs a contract to play a sexy character on "Melrose Place"
with a physical appearances clause, shows up seven months pregnant, gets
fired, then sues producer Aaron Spelling for pregnancy discrimination. Is it too
late to nominate her for the most self-centered ninny of 1997? Doesn't
this prove that feminism is not about equality but special privileges
for women? Won't the net effect of this suit be to make movie and film
producers more reluctant to hire women in advance? Doesn't
Hunter or her attorney, Gloria Allred, realize that this is career suicide
even if she wins the case? Is Gloria Allred really a plant from the far
right to make the left look ridiculous? Please advise. I'm ready to
leave the country.
Single until feminism self-destructs
Dear Single:
I completely agree with you that the frivolous Hunter Tylo lawsuit is a
perfect example of the Spoiled Debutante brand of yuppie feminism that I have
been jeering at for years. As an equity feminist, I oppose all special
protections for women as reactionary and counterproductive.
As for Gloria Allred, while I usually disagree with her political positions,
I'm quite fond of her as a fierce, dynamic television presence. A flamboyant,
street-smart Italian-American from Philadelphia, Allred has a florid
Mediterranean emotionalism and theatricality that I think a great relief from
the usual run of dull-minded, numbingly provincial lawyers who clog the
airwaves. I mean, I literally cannot look at that pallid CNN queen, Greta Van Susteren
(host of "Burden of Proof"),
who seems nice enough but is a classic Catharine MacKinnon clone of
desiccated, cut-off-at-the-neck WASPiness. Cybele save us from these
denatured, fast-track females!
Whatever her sometimes startling ideological excesses and misfired stunts, the
hectoring, pugnacious, quick-witted Gloria Allred is a great maverick role
model for the too-timorous young white women of America.
Dear Camille,
Do you read much film criticism? What do you think of its current
state? Do you have any favorite writers? Specifically, what do you think
of Pauline Kael? (I am hoping you'll say you like her since I do -- and
I imagine that I detect certain similarities between your respective
outlooks and writing styles.)
Lost it at the movies Dear Lost it:
Film criticism, at its height from the late 1950s to the early '70s, has
obviously totally lost its cultural centrality, with the overall decline in
the quality of films and with the massive growth of pre-release publicity
campaigns geared to television. By the time a movie actually opens, we've
been inundated with so many advance clips that we hardly need a reviewer to tell
us whether the movie is worth seeing or not. How stupid the studios are to
destroy their films' best surprises, particularly the funny one-liners that
lose their impact in theaters because we've heard them dozens of times already
in ads.
Parker Tyler, an audacious gay aesthete, was my favorite film critic. Second was the unfailingly perceptive
Pauline Kael, whose tart, lively, colloquial style I thought exactly right for
a mass form like the movies. However, I became somewhat disillusioned with
Kael because of her dismissive attitude toward the decadent European films I
loved ("La Dolce Vita," "Last Year at Marienbad," etc.). Third was Andrew
Sarris, whose acute columns during the high period of "The Village Voice"
celebrated the attention to physical beauty and staging of cinematic stylists
like Claude Chabrol.
Like Parker Tyler, I am primarily a myth-critic and pagan cultist -- something
that cannot be said of the sensible, pragmatic Kael, who never indulges in
feverish Tyler-Paglia gay mysticism. Kael and I do resemble each other in our
snappy humor and very modern, very American
voices. That punchy, scrappy, take-no-prisoners tone of mine long predates my
introduction to Kael (which came in graduate school via her published
collections of reviews; "The New Yorker" wasn't part of my world) and descends
first from Dorothy Parker, whose famous put-downs I adored as an adolescent,
and second from Ann Landers ("Wake up and smell the coffee!"), whose advice
column was a fixture of my family newspaper in Syracuse.
Ann Landers has never gotten the credit she deserves for creating a radically
outspoken female persona during the drowsily domestic and ethnically
repressive postwar period. Landers is, of course, the patron saint and
august foremother of "Ask Camille."
Dear Camille:
I was wondering what your take is on the recent cases where an older
woman has seduced a younger boy. In Seattle, for instance, a
married teacher, age 34, was found guilty of child rape after having an affair
with her student, age 14, and having their baby. While I do think a line was
crossed here because she's a teacher, I don't find the age difference that disturbing since in my opinion a
woman can't seduce a boy in the same way a man would a girl.
Clueless in Canada Dear Clueless:
I am on the record (in "Vamps & Tramps") as favoring a lowering of the age of
consent to 14, consistent with the laws of several European nations. I fail
to see what harm is suffered by a randy 14-year-old boy enjoying the sexual
favors of a 34-year-old woman. In the old Simone Signoret days in France,
such liaisons were regarded as not only acceptable but positively fruitful and
sophisticated.
When teacher-student relations are involved, however, a firm line must be
drawn. Modern institutions, which require equity for all students, cannot be
run with the impromptu casualness and aristocratic adventurism of Athenian
meet-and-match philosophical couplings at sunny stoa and midnight symposium.
I'm troubled by the double standard that lingers around girls, whom most of us
still think need greater sexual protection than boys. Biological facts -- the
sanctity of the virgin womb -- are at the heart of it, which is one reason this
civil liberties issue is so ignored by the gutless wonders of academic
poststructuralism and postmodernism, who are about as radical as a tattletale gray herd of sheep. In the United States, paternalistic tyranny continues to
increase, robbing the young of identity and free will.
Need a reality check? Ask Camille.
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